Please can someone help to get my new(bie) build running

[RobertSE6]

Thanks to the good people on this forum I finished wiring up my new PC (only my second build so took me a while!)

Problem now is that I can't get it to run and it's driving me nuts! - I hope its OK to start a new thread - the title of the previous one is no longer relevant and I've not had any replies to it for a while.

At first it wouldn't boot at all - but power was getting to the board (the power and reset buttons on the board were lit)

I'd put one of the chassis fan rpm wires into the pwr_fan connector which I wasn't sure was right and sure enough when I removed that, it booted up without any problems

I installed XP pro but when it asked me which disk to format and install to the size of the disk looked wrong (about 130,000 Mb I think) - both disks showed as the same size - but they should be 1Tb each.

Anyway, perhaps foolishly, I went ahead and installed Windows. That went fine but Windows is saying the disk is 127Gb

Can anyone telll me why that is and how to corrrect it please?

Unfortunately I can't remember what the BIOS said about the size of the disks - if it did - but I know it recognised both of them. It didn't recognise the 2 drives I installed from an old PC but that's somehting I'll have to come back to!

The reason I can't check that now is because I shut the PC down and it won't come on again.

First time it started for a second or two - fans started to spin - but then stopped suddenly - now I can't get any life out of it at all - just the power and reset lights on the board.

Can anyone help please - with the boot problem and the hard disk size?

Rob


System:
CPU: Core i7 965 Extreme
Motherboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm
Memory: 6Gb Corsair Dominator 1600
Graphics Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 X2
Hard Drive: 2 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ
Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatality Pro
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000W
Case: SilverStone Temjin TJ07B-W
CPU cooling: Thermalright Ultra 120 1366 RT
OS: Windows XP
Monitor: DELL 22"

[shadowpr]

Hard drive showing wrong capacity? Here's why.

[amdalex]

Did your XP disk have Service pack 2 on it? If it doesn't XP won't see more than 130gb.

[glc]

Out of case troubleshooting:

PROBLEMS with a NEW BUILD? Try This!!

Hard drive issue - XP requires SP1 to see over 128gb. SP2 is required on most new tech controllers to avoid a pci.sys bluescreen on install.

[RobertSE6]

Thanks for all your replies

I've read the thread on disk size so I understand the problem now - but I couldn't see anything about how to fix it . If I install the service pack can I sort it out 'retrospectively' - or do I need to start from scratch with an XP disk that has SP1 on it. If the latter how do I do update my install disk?

Kind of immaterial atm as the thing won't even start but would like to know for when I can get it going is someone can advise please

Will try the tips in the thread glc suggested to hopefully get it going again

Rob

[not important]

I do not believe you would have to start over. I "think" you will be OK after you install the Service Pack. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.

[glc]

If you want to have more than 128gb available at initial install, you will need to "slipstream" SP1, SP2, or SP3 into your installation disk and burn a new one. The only way to make your partition larger after the fact is with a 3rd party partition manager.

[lfnfan]

For slipstreaming, this step-by-step worked for me:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstre...3_cd_final.htm

looks a bit imposing, but if you take it one step at a time it's not so bad. As the article notes, if you don't have SP1 on your original XP disc, you will have to input the product key during installation to enable a complete installation with the slipstreamed disc i.e no option to fully install and then activate within 30 days. Anyway, I slipstreamed SP3 into an XP + SP2 original disc using the link above, and the new disc worked like a charm. You could follow this process to create the disc using your new pc, then use that disc to re-install Windows on that same pc...

...but it seems you have more fundamental issues regarding the build itself - you need to get it behaving with an out of case build first. See the links above.

Can't remember what CPU you are using, but my one observation would be that if you are fitting the stock Intel socket 775 heat sink & fan, you have to give it a lot of force (whilst still being gentle) to make sure the HSF is secured properly on the mobo. Edit: I see you are doing an i7 build with non-stock HSF...

hth